Self-Himprovement Mission and Purpose

After several years of writing for men's lifestyle brands, Blake Reichenbach, our owner and managing editor, got tired of seeing only one type of man portrayed in the content he was tasked with writing. The "marketing persona" he always got from employers was pretty much the same from brand to brand.

The persona was white, tall, muscular, college-educated, and affluent. He lived in major cities, like Los Angeles or NYC. His sexuality was never explicitly defined– even if the brand new most of their customers were in the LGBTQ+ community. He was apolitical.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with any of these things, it's a pretty small box to put manhood and masculinity in. That small box made Blake claustrophobic. He was tired of seeing his content for guys with dark skin edited out of existence. He grew bored with seeing plus-size guys rewritten to– at most– be average; he grew angry with seeing "average" being coded to mean thin or athletic. Not to be melodramatic, but a piece of his soul died every time he wrote about queer culture only for an editor make it heteronormative.

He wanted to write for a publication that left the box of masculinity open. When he couldn't find one, he created one. Thus, SELF-HIMPROVEMENT (formerly known as BlakeWrites) was born.

A Place for Hims, Thems, Hers, and Xirs

While our audience is predominately male and we primarily write about issues affecting masc-identifying folks, we also think that our content is right for, well, anybody. Regardless of what you were assigned at birth or labels you use/ don't use– you're welcome here!

We fully recognize that we have room to improve and can do more to showcase even more voices and experiences, and that's something we're actively working on. In particular, we're working hard to build up enough revenue to pay more trans voices, nonbinary voices, and BIPOC voices to contribute to our platform.

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About Us

Self-himprovement, formerly known as BlakeWrites, is a publication for today's hims, thems, and hers. We got our start by focusing on expanding the scope of masculinity and what makes a man a man. That's still something we're focusing on and iterating upon. While guys and masc folks are our primary readers, we're also not overly concerned about the labels our readers use. So welcome aboard regardless of your pronouns, expression, or physical traits.